Talk:Plucking (glaciation)

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The word "plucking" appears in my 1966 edition of Chambers' 20th century Dictionary in the sense of failing an exam. The entry reads:

  "pluck" - to fail, refuse a pass to, in an examination - from  the custom of "plucking" (a piece of silk at the back of) "the proctor's gown", in protest.

I came across this because the expression "being plucked" occurs at least twice in this sense in William Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" (1847), which I am reading.

Iain Smith